Sustainability

At Green Goods we want to inspire and support individuals in their quest to be stewards of a healthy planet and to pursue healthy lifestyles. Our goal is to provide products and services that enable our clients to live healthy lives and create sustainable and green environments. Sustainability moves beyond your own home and business and addresses how the businesses that create these products operate and how materials are transported. Sustainability means being intentional in your buying choices, including where you choose to buy your materials. Because of this, we request you support companies that not only offer "green" products, but also those who operate their business with environmental concern and fair social practices.

Community

We at Green Goods appreciate the wonderful beauty of the earth and our loving community of friends and family. We are grateful for the earth’s resources and seek to find balance in our business practices and personal lives in protecting and cultivating her. We see good stewardship of the environment and our business practices as one in the same. We are dedicated to being responsible and continue to evaluate where we are at in the present and what new and emerging best practices we can employ.

Keeping Earth in Business.

Family

Like all families, there are no secrets. Brothers Brian and Mikel Robertson co-founded Green Goods in 2005 with the intent to offer their services as a resource to the community to healthy living solutions related to the building industry. Over the years, we have built a great team we consider to be our family. Characteristics that are constant among the Green Goods team is their sincerity in their desire to support individuals pursue healthy lifestyles, transparency in their quest to seek out new and emerging appropriate technologies and materials and their genuine kindness. We are proud of who we work with.

Mikel Robertson

Mikel began his career in 1991, where he worked on historic renovation projects in Portland, Oregon, learning to bring old flooring, windows, doors, and light fixtures back to life. The experience compelled him to consider the social and environmental benefits of working with affordable, environmentally low impact building materials. In no time, he found himself volunteering for the non-profit ReBuilding Center, the largest retail salvage shop in the nation.

A half dozen years later, Mikel wanted to learn how people in other parts of the world lived sustainably on the earth. In 1997, he traveled to Nueva Esparanza, El Salvador where he helped build houses made from local materials. The driving force of the community was women, many with husbands and sons who were killed during the country’s brutal civil war.

Mikel’s experience in El Salvador only intensified his desire to travel and learn about sustainable living. He worked in other intentional communities in southern Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala then made his way to Wales, where he studied grey water pond systems and other bio remediation strategies at the Center for Appropriate Technology. Moving on to France, Mikel put some of his new found skills to work at a large vineyard that practiced sustainable agriculture. For another year and a half, Mikel continued to travel across the Western Sahara, through Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso, then on to Nigeria where he learned how communities lived sustainably in African bioregions. These travels only confirmed his believe that the world is truly a global village, where the actions of one community have ripple effects across the planet. Our challenge is to try to try to make sure our impact is positive.

Back home in California’s Central Coast, Mikel and three university friends established Four Elements Farm, an intentional community where members and interns can work on an organic farm, practice permaculture technologies and learn natural building techniques.

In 2003, Mikel read an article that Cal Poly was planning to build new student housing, and was dismayed to learn the it would incorporate few green techniques. The environmental activist saw an opportunity and seized it. He organized a forum to show developers how to design campus buildings with an eye to conserving natural resources, cutting energy costs and ensuring healthy indoor air. The developers took Mikel’s words to heart; upon completion the university’s housing project was awarded a LEED certificate. In the process, Mikel discovered that his efforts had a ripple effect; people in the Central Coast began asking him where them could obtain green building materials. The questions sparked another idea from which Green Goods was born in 2005.

Mikel Robertson is the licensed general contractor for Green Goods and the manager of the Green Good’s retail showroom in San Luis Obispo. As a member of the Sustainable Builders Council, he has made numerous presentations regarding environmentally preferable materials, greywater and waste diversion techniques. He is also founder and executive committee member of SLO Green Build, a local non-profit whose mission is to provide architects, engineers, contractors, developers, and other building professionals with the proper tools to build sustainable projects.

Brian Robertson

Brian’s passion for his craft as a cabinet and furniture maker started at San Luis Obispo High School, during woodworking and ceramics courses. At the University of California at Santa Cruz, he became immersed in courses on social change theory, renewable energy and sustainable living. An internship at the Mid Western Renewable Energy Association, afforded him the opportunity to help adults and children learn about the benefits of sustainable living. Before graduating with a B.A. in Community Studies, Brian also ran one of the world’s largest sustainable living and renewable energy fairs.

Brian traveled to South America, where he gained a deeper appreciation of how some of our wasteful actions on the local level can have a global impact. In 2005, Brian and his brother started Green Goods to help preserve the earth’s resources and promote healthy, equitable communities.

Today, Brian is co-owner and manages Green Goods cabinet shop. Brian’s cabinets and woodwork are inspired by a variety of styles and materials. Working with reclaimed and FSC certified woods provide the challenge to preserve the original characteristics of the materials while still create something unique. From rustic to modern, reclaimed to new, Brian and the team at Green Goods have the style, the experience and the skills you are looking for to help you preserve the earth and promote the well being of your family.

Brian has been recognized by Festool as an expert in his field. Watch a few videos Brian has produced with Green Goods and Festool below.